


You Had a Busy Day Today

by katquarius



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Eve loves her enough to let a whole lot of bullshit slide, F/F, Fluff, One Shot, Post-Season/Series 03, Soft Eve Polastri, Soft Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, Villanelle is the disaster gay of the century so here's an entire fic of her antics, Villaneve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:07:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25322854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katquarius/pseuds/katquarius
Summary: "As it turned out, Eve realized as she entered the doorway, Villanelle was even worse off than she’d let on.The house was virtually unrecognizable."OREve goes on a weeklong business trip. Villanelle tries her best to cope without her, to the tune of excessive cleaning, remodeling, shopping, et cetera.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 36
Kudos: 289





	You Had a Busy Day Today

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the prompt “You had a business trip and I missed you so much that I kind of tore up the  
> house in your absence like a dog with separation anxiety… sorry?”
> 
> Title is from "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John

Villanelle was struggling.

Eve was on a weeklong ‘business trip’ (she was really just meeting with Carolyn about their next steps regarding the Twelve, but didn’t want to tell her about her and Villanelle’s… cohabitation until after she knew that Villanelle would be safe from Carolyn), and after two months of being by her side all day every day, Villanelle didn’t know what to do with herself.

Which was strange. You’d think someone who’d spent most of their life alone, barring two months, would be used to it; able to slip into an old mindset and execute old habits.

Not Villanelle, though, apparently.

Her issues were made worse by the fact that she was the one left at home while Eve was out and about doing stuff. If Villanelle was planning to assassinate someone or something, she’d at least have something to think about and prepare for to keep herself occupied. As it was, all she could do was sit and wait for Eve to come back. And Villanelle had never been very good at sitting still.

Eve’s flight left on Monday morning, and after driving her to the airport and kissing her goodbye Villanelle found herself standing frozen in their foyer, completely lost.

What did she normally do at 9am on a Monday?

Technically unemployed and living off of Villanelle’s ‘blood money,’ as Eve had called it, they’d become a bit lazy. Villanelle usually didn’t get up until eleven. Eve was a little better, generally staying in bed until around ten, when she would gently extricate herself from Villanelle’s arm slung around her waist.

Villanelle wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep now, though, what with the sun up and both her mind and body completely awake. She figured she’d might as well try to be productive. Eve would like that, and it’d keep Villanelle busy.

She started by checking the mailbox; running a load of laundry; unloading the dishwasher; and sweeping, vacuuming, then mopping the hardwood floor and also vacuuming the carpet.

It was only 10am by the time she was finished, and she groaned.

She stripped the beds, threw the sheets in the wash, and remade the bed with different sheets; fully cleaned all three bathrooms; took out the trash; dusted the shelves, light fixtures, and ceiling fans; and wiped the tables and counters. (Then she realized the dust and crumbs had settled on the floor, so she vacuumed again.)

She cleaned the windows, cleaned all the stainless steel in the kitchen, and disinfected all the doorknobs and handles in the house because she couldn’t think of anything else more conventional to do.

By then, the laundry was done, so she folded her and Eve’s clothes, put them away, and put the sheets in the linen closet.

All out of actual chores to do, Villanelle started organizing. She sorted out their junk drawer, finding a couple hair ties she’d been looking for and also one of her nicest daggers. She sorted the mail into piles of magazines and advertisements for herself and taxes and bills for Eve, because Lord knew Villanelle had no idea how to do them. She put their books and movies on the shelf in the living room into alphabetical order, just because.

She stopped for lunch, then, but got sidetracked when she realized the state of their fridge. She promptly threw out all the food that had gone bad, consolidated the leftovers into more appropriately sized Tupperware containers, and organized the food based on food group instead of by whatever haphazard way Eve had tossed them into the fridge.

Finally, she made herself a chicken salad sandwich, freaked out when she got some crumbs on the table and floor, and worried that she’d started to become obsessive compulsive.

Well, she was already a bit obsessive compulsive, even she had to admit, but never in regard to cleaning.

She got a text from Eve while she was eating to notify her that she’d landed safely and was on her way to the hotel. Villanelle breathed out a sigh of relief, then wondered when she became the type of person who felt relieved when people’s planes landed safely. Konstantin was right all those months ago--Eve _was_ making her soft.

Villanelle found that she didn't mind all that much.

After lunch, she wracked her brain for something else to clean or organize but came up short. On a whim, she rotated their square kitchen table 45 degrees. It looked quite nice, and she suddenly had a new project.

She spent the better part of the next four hours rearranging all the furniture that she possibly could. Some rooms were a bit restrained, like the kitchen and bathrooms, but otherwise, she did her best to turn the house on its head.

In the living room she moved the TV stand to the adjacent wall, then switched the couch and armchair (which was more difficult than she originally anticipated) so that the new configuration was both rotated and flipped. 

They each had a desk in the office, so she switched those and rotated one to make more of an “L” shape. Then she moved Eve’s bookcase of criminal psychology textbooks closer to where her desk was, now.

She didn’t go into the guest bedroom often, so she didn’t feel a compelling need to have a change of scenery, but she moved the bed to the adjacent wall anyway just for something to do.

In the master bedroom she did much the same, moving their bed to a different wall and shuffling the dresser and bureau around. She hoped Eve wouldn’t mind.

When she was finished, she prepared Sausage, Potato, and Kale Soup for dinner and relished the sensible layout of the fridge. She ate it by herself at the table, wishing she had Eve to talk to. She still had a couple hours to go before Eve was due to video call her at nine.

She figured her feet deserved a bit of a break after standing all day, so she curled up on the couch to watch ‘The Sixth Sense.’

It was okay. Good plot, fascinating relationship between the psychologist and the child, but she didn’t get the fuss about it. She thought the big ‘twist’ was obvious, so it was kind of funny that none of the characters figured it out until the end.

Afterward, she relocated upstairs to wait in bed for Eve to call. At 9pm on the dot, Eve’s name flashed on her screen, and her face appeared when Villanelle accepted.

“Hi Eve!” she greeted excitedly.

“Hey!” Eve looked a little tired, but happy to see Villanelle.

“How was the first meeting?”

“Good! We didn’t really talk about anything interesting, mostly just planned out the meetings for the rest of the week.”

“Ah, so you don’t know if Carolyn is going to have me arrested? Or murdered?” Villanelle raised her eyebrows playfully.

Eve laughed. “No, not yet. I’ll be working on that for the rest of the week. What have you been up to today?”

What hadn’t Villanelle done today? “Well, I cleaned the entire house.”

“Really?”

“Yes, top to bottom.”

“Wow, thank you!”

Villanelle nodded. “I also organized some stuff. Junk drawer, fridge, that sort of thing.”

“You did?” Eve sounded slightly more skeptical now than surprised and grateful. 

(It wasn’t that she didn’t believe Villanelle, but Eve was… concerned about the sudden change in behavior. Villanelle wasn’t known to sit down and complete menial tasks like that without getting distracted.)

“Yes.” Villanelle paused for a moment, wondering if she should offer some sort of explanation for her uncharacteristic actions. 

After they mutually decided on the bridge that their story together wasn’t quite finished, it was only natural to give into the pull they felt toward each other, so now they shared a house and a bed but hadn’t done much talking about their feelings. She couldn’t speak for Eve, but for Villanelle, the hold up was that she didn’t even know how to sort out her own emotions. She knew she liked Eve, really really liked her, because she never got bored of being around her. And she generally got bored by _everything._ If Villanelle had to guess, she’d assume that Eve liked being around her, too, or else they wouldn’t be living together, and Eve wouldn’t kiss her and have sex with her as much as she did. It was hard to be sure, though. You can fuck people without actually liking them all that much. Villanelle used to do it a lot.

Since she didn’t want to ruin the good thing they had going, she decided not to share how much Eve’s absence was affecting her both emotionally and mentally. She went for a simple explanation instead.

“We’ve been doing everything together lately, so I didn’t know what else to do with myself.”

“Ah,” Eve smiled in understanding. “Well, I appreciate it.”

Villanelle thought briefly about telling Eve about the furniture rearrangement. But then she glanced around at their unrecognizable bedroom and suddenly became worried that Eve wouldn’t like it, or wouldn’t like that Villanelle changed stuff about their house without asking. Or that it’d be another clue to show how… off Villanelle was without her. So, she let it be.

They chatted for a little while after that before calling it a night; Eve was tired from her flight. Villanelle got to bed a couple hours earlier than usual; she had nothing better to do besides sleep, although sleep did take longer than usual to come without the body next to her that she’d grown accustomed to. She wondered if Eve felt the same way.

* * *

Villanelle woke on Tuesday morning with a start. She’d had an epiphany: she should paint the house. Most of the rooms looked different with their new furniture layout, so it only made sense to finish the transformation with new wall colors. And if Eve didn’t like it, they could always just paint back over it, no problem. Plus, it was an all day project so she wouldn’t have to worry about running out of things to do like she had yesterday.

She had her clothes on, teeth brushed, and coffee in hand and was on her way to Home Depot within minutes.

She spent a fair bit of time contemplating paint colors and eventually decided that she’d better take a color fan deck home with her to choose based on the colors of the furniture and the lighting in the rooms and everything, and then she could just take a second trip out to buy the paint.

Back at home, she ended up deciding on a light periwinkle in the bedroom, navy for the kitchen, a dark brown for the living room and office, a medium gray for the guest bedroom, and a grayish green for all the bathrooms.

She drove back to the store and picked up enough paint for each room, as well as painter’s tape, a paint roller and its tray, and a massive tarp.

At home, she changed into the closest thing she had to an outfit suitable for painting in (a 50 euro t-shirt and Lululemon running shorts) and got to work. Which, of course, involved moving all the furniture that she’d just moved the day before into the middle of the room so she could get behind it, but that just made the process take even longer, which was what Villanelle was going for.  
Maybe Eve would appreciate her new Furniture Moving muscles.

By the evening, she’d finished the entire house, furniture back in its (new) place, and the only casualty was a small spot of gray paint on the guest room carpet. She had just enough time to make and eat her dinner before Eve was calling, and Villanelle brought her up to the bedroom again. The periwinkle was subtle enough that Villanelle might be able to pass it off as the light gray it was before.

“Hello, Eve,” she smiled into the camera.

“Hey, Villanelle. How was your day?”

“Same old. I went for a run, watched some TV, did a little shopping.”

Villanelle prided herself on putting good effort into her lies, but Eve was hardly paying attention to her words anyway.

“Are you in the bedroom again?”

“Yeah, why?”

Eve peered over Villanelle’s shoulder. “Why do the walls look… purple?”

Shit.

“Must just be weird lighting,” Villanelle deflected, glancing over her own shoulder in faux curiosity.

“Wait, what’s that on your face?”

Villanelle looked back at her phone. “What? Where?” She ran a hand along her cheeks, over her mouth. “Do I have food on my face?”

“It’s beneath your ear, like, behind your jaw. It’s brown?”

Fuck. The paint.

“Oh! That’s right, I did a bit of yard work today. Weeding, and such. It must be dirt.” 

Jeez, now she had to go do yard work to cover her lie.

“Ah. Well, thanks!”

“No problem,” Villanelle smiled at her. This was great. Eve believed her, and Villanelle could save face.

(Eve didn’t believe her. She knew what paint looked like, and she knew that only a purple fucking lightbulb could make a gray wall look purple. She was enjoying humoring Villanelle, though, and what was the harm in painting a room or two? Lord knew Villanelle had a better eye for that sort of thing than Eve. She even mentioned contemplating being an interior designer at their tea dance.)

Villanelle returned Eve’s question. “How was your day?” 

“Eh, okay. Fortunately, the meetings were slightly more interesting, and I had some free time. Slept like shit last night, though, so I’ve been tired.”

Villanelle nodded in sympathy. “Hotel beds are the worst.”

“Well, that, and I didn’t have my space heater with me.”

Villanelle wrinkled her forehead in confusion. “We don’t sleep with a space heater. We use the fan.”

“I meant you, Villanelle,” Eve smiled.

“Do I run hot?”

“Yes,” Eve nodded emphatically. “It’s why I need the fan.”

“Oh.” Villanelle wasn’t sure what to make of that. Did Eve like sleeping beside her or not? “Sorry?”

Eve laughed and shook her head. “Villanelle, I’m trying to tell you that I missed you last night.”

“Ohhh,” she dragged out, eyes widening comically. “I get it. Don’t worry, we can have sex as soon as you get back.”

“What? No, that’s not what I meant.”

“You don’t want to have sex anymore?” Villanelle sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case. She could handle not formally defining their relationship, but she didn’t think she’d be able to take living with Eve without being able to touch her. And she didn’t want to move out, either.

“No, I do! Of course I do. I meant,” Eve laughed again, “I meant that I miss you--Villanelle--in general. Like, even with your clothes on.”

“Oh!” Villanelle wasn’t expecting Eve to just come out and say it; they’d been dancing around conversations like this for so long. She realized that she quite liked being missed, though. She didn’t think she’d been missed before. “I... miss you too. Hence the… yard work to take my mind off things.”

“I see. Well, that’s very sweet of you,” Eve smiled.

Villanelle just shrugged. She was out of her comfort zone but not entirely sure whether it was a bad thing or not.

They moved onto lighter topics after that, talking for half an hour or so before heading to bed. Villanelle savored the feeling of being missed to help her sleep without Eve beside her.

* * *

On Wednesday, Villanelle resigned herself to a grueling day of yard work. The worst parts were that a) she had brought it upon herself when she’d had to think fast to cover her own ass, and b) housework was no fun when you _had_ to do it instead of wanting to do it.

She made her third trip to Home Depot in two days to pick up all the necessary materials to build a raised vegetable garden, as well as to do some general landscaping.

She started behind the house with the garden because it seemed like the more entertaining of the projects. She built the rectangular wooden frame first, using the hammer and nails she’d bought because they didn’t already own any of that stuff, and pushed the longer side up against the house. Then she filled it with eight massive bags of garden soil (which was very hard work, she wished Eve were here to enjoy the show) and dug appropriately spaced and sized holes for each of the vegetable seeds. She planted straight rows of beets, lettuce, kale, cucumbers, peas, radishes, cherry tomatoes, and green beans, and even labeled the rows with little picket signs. She finished by watering over the seeds with their new watering can and taking a photo to send to Eve.

‘Finished the garden I started yesterday,’ she little-white-lied for the photo’s caption.

Afterward, she moved around to the front of their property to spruce up the minimal landscaping the house already had. She planted some daisies, a few boxwoods, two hydrangeas, and a gardenia in the mulch bed that ran along the front of the house. She covered the bed in new mulch and gave all the plants a good water.

Eve’s reply came as she was finishing up--‘That looks amazing!’

Villanelle smiled and moved inside to eat lunch. Instead of feeling tired like she would have expected, the manual labor had energized her, so she changed out of her tank top and cargo pants and into workout clothes.

She went for a two mile run, came back and got a glass of water, realized she wasn’t tired, and went back outside for another four miles. She took a shower and still wasn’t tired so she did some yoga and then some pilates. Then went for another run. Then did 30 pushups and 50 sit ups and a 3 minute plank. Then showered again. Then did a little more yoga, with extra stretching, to wind down. 

She took one final shower, wondering if she’d fucked their water bill.

She savored the way her muscles ached, happy to have something to think about other than the fact that Eve was only a little over halfway done with her trip. They still had Wednesday night, all of Thursday, and half of Friday to go and Villanelle was running out of distractions.

She made and ate dinner then watched TV to pass the time until Eve called.

When Eve’s name popped up on her screen, she hopped to her feet and dashed upstairs, accepting the call as she fell back on the bed.

“Hey,” she smiled. Eve’s face was a sight for sore eyes (and sore literally every muscle in Villanelle’s body). What was that phrase about distance making you like someone even more?

“Hey, yourself. How are you?”

She meant to shrug, but “missing you” slipped out of her mouth instead. Her eyes widened. Yes, they’d had a similar conversation last night, but Eve had said it first, and Villanelle was hesitant and awkward when she’d finally worked up the courage to say it back.

“I miss you too,” Eve replied, easily, without a trace of Villanelle’s inner turmoil in her voice.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to talk about their relationship. If Eve was so nonchalant about it, maybe Villanelle could be, too.

Not over the phone, though. Villanelle had read somewhere that you should always have important conversations in person.

“What’d you do today?” Eve asked with a hint of an amused smirk. That confused Villanelle, why would Eve be smug about such a simple question?

“I did more yard work, as you know,” Villanelle started.

Eve nodded, a gesture for Villanelle to continue.

“And I exercised.”

It was quiet for a moment, like Eve was waiting for something. She raised her eyebrows. “That’s it?”

“Yes, besides eating and watching TV.” Villanelle frowned at Eve. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing, I just know you’ve been bored lately. I figured you’d have done something… extravagant to pass the time.”

“Oh, well I did exercise a _lot,_ so that helped.”

“How do you mean?”

“Like,” Villanelle did the tallying in her head, “I went for three runs, did yoga twice, pilates once, and some strength and core stuff.”

“Jesus, there it is,” Eve muttered under her breath, but she was smiling.

The mixed signals confounded Villanelle. “Are you making fun of me?” she asked.

“No,” Eve laughed. “Well, kinda. But in a nice way, you know?”

Villanelle most certainly did not know, but she nodded anyway. She decided to change the subject. “How was your day?”

“Good! Really good, actually. I’m almost positive Carolyn doesn’t want you dead, based on her plans for moving forward. I’m going to ask her point blank tomorrow, though, and I’m thinking I’ll threaten to blackmail her if she lies to me.”

“Wow. You are a hard ass now,” Villanelle commented. “You really have changed,” she continued, referencing their conversation on the bridge.

“Hm, well, so have you.”

Villanelle used to worry that Eve wouldn’t like her if she changed, since her flamboyant, utterly remorseless murders were what attracted her in the first place. Judging by the smile on Eve’s face, head slightly tilted as she looked back at Villanelle, she concluded that she needn’t have worried about that at all.

She did wonder if Eve liked her more, less, or the same now, though.

They talked for longer than usual on the phone, the conversation flowing easily since they’d gotten one step closer to being on the same page emotionally. Villanelle slept like a baby when she finally got to bed, the physical exhaustion from the day knocking her out despite the empty other side of the bed.

* * *

Villanelle hadn’t even started eating her breakfast on Thursday morning when she began to feel nauseous. Her first thought was that it must’ve been all the exercise, but her body was barely even sore. Why would her stomach hurt from exertion if her muscles didn’t even hurt?

It only got worse over the next couple hours. Strangely, she didn’t feel bored and restless like she had for the past few days. She was just… down, and spent her time generally moping around the house.

She started to get a headache, too, but didn’t feel like she was getting sick. There was no congestion or itchiness in her throat, she didn’t have a fever. And she didn’t feel tired, just... sad?

She felt kind of like how she did when she was preparing to assassinate Eve and was preemptively mourning. But Eve wasn’t about to die this time, she just wasn’t here right now.

Maybe the two weren’t so different.

She went upstairs to lie down for a while in hopes that her headache would alleviate. When she rolled over to put her head on Eve’s pillow and smell her shampoo, tears started to prick in the corners of her eyes. Which was weird. She’d only cried two other times in recent history: once when she was coming down after doing drugs because Eve hadn’t come to see her kill, and once when she got stabbed and felt like shit about killing her mom and fucking up a job.

Both were a little more extreme than her current predicament. Eve had literally only been gone for a few days and they still talked nightly. Villanelle had gone six months without seeing Eve before and was mostly fine, rebound wife notwithstanding, so what was this reaction all about?

She wiped away a couple escaped tears, pulled out her phone, and Googled, after much deliberation over how to refer to Eve (rival? girlfriend?), ‘I miss my housemate a lot headache nausea crying.’ The top result was depression, but Villanelle didn’t think it was that. She wasn’t persistently sad or anything; she’d actually been quite enjoying her life for the past couple months.

Underneath came a medical news website about separation anxiety in adults. She didn’t generally feel anxious, never saw the point in excessive worrying. She frowned as she clicked on it anyway and started reading the page.

The first two symptoms were nausea and headaches, and the furrow in her brow deepened.

She scrolled down to the risk factors. There were three: being female, childhood adversity (such as the death of a family member), and a history of traumatic childhood events (such as abuse). Well, fuck. Check, check (check), and check (check).

The bottom of the article listed some resources for treatment, but Villanelle thought that was stupid. She didn’t need cognitive behavioral therapy or support groups to feel better, she just needed Eve to come home.

She was glad to be able to label why she was so upset, and why she’d been especially restless over the past few days, but it didn’t help her physically feel better. After taking a couple Ibuprofen and moping around some more she decided to engage in her favorite comfort activity: shopping. All same day delivery, of course. Villanelle had never been patient.

She pulled out her laptop and got to work. She started with clothes, buying a couple pairs of shoes, a burgundy suit, trendy striped pants, and a yellow ruffled blouse. She also bought a few items for Eve--plaid slacks that she might actually wear and a skin tight dress that was a little more risky.

She moved onto jewelry and other accessories--buying herself a gold necklace and a matching ring, and a new bottle of La Villanelle perfume for Eve, just for kicks. A new backpack for herself, a smaller purse for Eve. The bag she normally carried around was far too unwieldy.

Still on her landscaping kick from yesterday, she bought a whole slew of houseplants to help decorate their still relatively new home. A trailing plant for the office bookshelf, a few cacti for the living room, a money plant for the kitchen and another for their bedroom, and a bunch of varied small, potted plants that could go anywhere.

As she sat on the bed, she decided that they could use a linen upgrade as well, so she ordered a set of cream silk sheets and a new Liliana Rizzari throw. Better pillows, too. Villanelle didn’t want to develop a stiff neck. Oh, and a new mattress so neither of them fucked up their backs.

She concluded that she needed a juicer; it’d been taking her forever to make smoothies in the mornings. Might as well get a better coffee machine while she was at it. And a mixer--Villanelle dabbled in baking and got bored and frustrated when she had to spend too much time mixing the batter by hand.

Shopping helped her feel a little better, as it always did, but overall she still felt like shit. So while she waited for everything to arrive she decided to take what she saw kids on the internet call a ‘depression nap’ and conked out for four hours on Eve’s side of the bed in hopes that her headache and nausea would go away.

Later on, she woke up to a text from Eve reading ‘I won’t be able to call you tonight, a last minute meeting came up. But I’ll see you tomorrow!’, which did nothing to help Villanelle’s mood. She was missing Eve more than ever and _today_ was the day she couldn’t call?

She got out of bed and pulled one of Eve’s big sweaters over her head. They’d never shared clothes before, not having talked about being in an actual relationship, but Villanelle didn’t see any harm in it. She felt like Eve’s lonely girlfriend, so why not act like her lonely girlfriend, just for a little while? It’s not like Eve would find out anyway.

By then, a lot of her comfort purchases had started to arrive, so she pulled the boxes in from the porch and started unpacking them. She didn’t have the energy to distribute the items to their intended locations so most of them ended up strewn about in the office, living room, and kitchen.

Not feeling up to cooking anything, she ordered Chinese for dinner and had to blink back tears again when it came and she noticed that she’d absentmindedly ordered Eve’s usual. So weird.

There was a ‘Star Wars’ marathon on TV so she watched all of ‘A New Hope’ and two thirds of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ before falling asleep on the couch, exhausted from the day’s emotions.

* * *

At half past midnight Eve unlocked and opened the front door as quietly as humanly possible, knowing Villanelle was a light sleeper. Eve figured she’d learned that skill while in prison or when she started working as an assassin, and wondered if it’d ever go away now that she didn’t want to kill anymore.

There was no last minute meeting. Eve wasn’t able to call Villanelle at nine because she was already on the plane back home. She and Carolyn had worked everything out by noon on Thursday (Villanelle’s life was officially not in danger, at least from Carolyn), so Eve was free to come home early.

She didn’t hesitate for a second before booking a new flight ticket. She’d missed Villanelle more than she originally expected, and she knew Villanelle would be ecstatic--she’d been out of sorts lately if her behavior on the calls was anything to go by.

As it turned out, Eve realized as she entered the doorway, Villanelle was even worse off than she’d let on. 

The house was virtually unrecognizable. First of all, the landscaping outside looked beautiful. Inside, every single wall was painted a new, striking color, not just a couple rooms like Eve had expected. And the layout was all different--furniture rotated and shifted around to completely change the feel of the floorplan.

Villanelle really had a knack for this sort of thing. Maybe they should actually try to get her an interior designing job. Would she need a degree for that? Eve had no idea.

The only thing that didn’t look so great about the house, Eve noticed as she passed the office and kitchen, were the cardboard boxes and newly purchased clothes, bedding, and kitchen appliances scattered literally everywhere. There was also a startling amount of plants. It seemed that Villanelle had gone on a shopping spree, but didn’t end up finishing the project by actually putting everything away.

Eve ran her hand over a pair of pants draped over a kitchen chair. They didn’t seem to be Villanelle’s typical style. She checked the tag, and noticed that they were her own size and also from a very expensive designer. At least Villanelle was thoughtful, if not frugal, she thought with a smile.

She turned the corner into the living room and happened upon the ever present object of her thoughts--sleeping, it seemed--on their newly reoriented couch. She was curled up in a semi-fetal position and was wearing Eve’s sweater, oddly enough. (She ignored the butterflies in her chest at the sight.) The light of the forgotten TV danced across Villanelle’s face.

Eve thought she looked really... small, which was startling, since she normally had a whole larger-than-life presence about her.

Eve reached for the remote on the coffee table and turned the volume down. She watched Villanelle for a moment, trying not to feel creepy about it.

Villanelle normally looked peaceful when she slept, but tonight her eyebrows were pinched together in an upset frown. Eve knew that she had caused it, by leaving in the first place and then not calling tonight, and it made her feel like shit. Even if she was home now.

Looking at Villanelle’s eyelashes fluttering as she slept, Eve was struck with the sudden realization that she could do this… thing with Villanelle that had been building for two months. Or, a year and a half, honestly. 

She’d been hesitant, for, well, numerous reasons--thoughts like ‘Villanelle killed Bill’ and ‘Villanelle shot me’ and ‘Villanelle doesn’t understand what love is’ always in the back of her mind--but for once, they were quiet.

She could do coming home early to surprise Villanelle, and she could do Villanelle sleeping in her sweater because she missed her, and she could do Villanelle tearing up the house in her absence like a dog with separation anxiety.

She was already doing kissing Villanelle and having sex with her and living with her. Would it be so difficult to just give in and do the rest of it, too? The feelings and the pet names and the going steady?

She could do this. More than that, she _wanted_ to do this. And all the signs recently pointed toward Villanelle wanting this, too.

And everything else fell away.

Eve crept forward and knelt down in front of Villanelle. She lifted a hand to gently cup her cheek as she had in her old kitchen so many months ago. “Villanelle?” she whispered, thumb running along a high cheekbone.

Villanelle’s eyes opened and immediately found hers, pupils widening in recognition before she blinked in disbelief. “Eve?” she whispered back.

“I came home early,” Eve informed with a smile.

“You came home early?” Villanelle echoed. Then the words registered, and she exhaled a breathless laugh and sat up quickly to wrap Eve in a tight hug. “I missed you so much,” she breathed into Eve’s ear, accent thick with sleep.

Eve slid her arms around Villanelle’s waist and rubbed her back. “I know, baby,” she laughed into her hair.

Villanelle tensed up, then, and pulled away to look at Eve questioningly. “You never call me that.”

“I know.”

“Well, you did that one time when you left me a note in Anna’s coat, but I don’t think that counted.”

“No, it didn’t,” Eve agreed.

“But this one does?” Villanelle asked, and her eyebrows were raised hopefully, but not too hopefully because Eve could tell that she didn’t want to be rejected and get hurt but she didn’t have anything to worry about because _wow_ Eve could look at that face forever and never get tired of it and she was ready to test that theory because she really just loved Villanelle. Okay? There, she said it, she loves Villanelle.

“Yes,” Eve laughed, sounding cooler than she felt inside. “This one counts.”

And Eve would waste 50 euros on a plane ticket rescheduling fee a hundred times over if it meant she’d get to see the ear splitting grin Villanelle was wearing every time.

Eve felt compelled to kiss it off her, so she did.

And, not to be dramatic, but she’d really fucking missed those lips, even though it’d only been four days and three nights. 

On second thought, maybe that wasn’t so strange. Villanelle had always been sort of a drug for her.

When they pulled apart, Villanelle had a contemplative look on her face. “So what does this mean?”

“Well, _I_ mean that I want to give this, us, a shot. Like, formally.”

“Eve, are you asking me to be your girlfriend?” Villanelle teased playfully.

Eve laughed. “Yeah, I guess I am.” Wasn’t that something? She was forty-five years old, separated from her husband of fifteen years, and was now asking a twenty-six year old Russian ex-assassin to be her fucking girlfriend.

Villanelle tossed her a smug grin. “I knew you liked me.”

For the vast majority of their time knowing one another, Villanelle had always had the upper hand over her. In the past couple months they’d re-established themselves as equals, so Eve always enjoyed getting the opportunity to prove it by throwing Villanelle for a loop. She knew just the thing to throw Villanelle off her game, while serving the dual purpose of assuring Villanelle just how in this she was.

“Hm, yes, but you forgot something.”

Villanelle raised an eyebrow, smirk still in place. “I did?”

“Yes. I love you,” she said, voice only wavering slightly in nervousness.

It didn’t have the intended effect.

Sound drained from the room, and Villanelle’s smile dropped. She leaned back from Eve a little bit, shaking her head slowly. “No, you don’t.”

Fuck. Was it too soon to say something like that? Surely not, Villanelle had said it first, after all, eight months ago, and they’d been very… close ever since the bridge.

The look on Villanelle’s face said otherwise, though.

Eve tried for a bit of brevity. “Surely I get to decide that.”

“In Rome you said you didn’t,” Villanelle argued.

Well, yeah. Villanelle had just manipulated her into murdering someone. Of course she wasn’t her favorite person once the gun came out. Did Villanelle not recognize how much things had changed since then? “Things are different now. I think _you’re_ different now. And now I love you.”

“Stop saying that,” Villanelle demanded, voice raising slightly as she frowned.

“What?” Eve had never known anyone to react this way to a confession of love, of all things. “What’s wrong?”

Villanelle shook her head again, scoffing to belittle her own feelings. “Nothing.”

“It obviously isn’t nothing,” Eve countered gently.

Villanelle wasn’t backing down. “It’s not important.”

“It is to me.” Eve tried to convey her sincerity with her eyes, but Villanelle wasn’t making eye contact with her anyway.

Villanelle frowned as she stared blankly down at Eve’s abdomen. “Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Caring about me. Saying you _love_ me.” She said it with such disdain and Eve didn’t understand why, especially since Villanelle had been a bit trigger happy with the L word back in Rome (and also with an actual gun).

“But I do!” Eve protested, desperate for Villanelle to believe her.

“Well I don’t want you to.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not true!” Villanelle exploded, finally looking at Eve with anger in her eyes. “No one ever means it.” The anger faded into something else, then, and if Eve didn’t know better she’d call it sadness. “They lie,” she finished, looking past Eve’s shoulder.

That made sense, Eve supposed. A lot of people probably worried about others not actually loving them like they say they do.

Eve decided on a more logical approach. Villanelle usually responded better to those. “Did you mean it when you said it to me in Rome?”

Villanelle paused for a moment, brow furrowed. “Yes. I… know that you said I didn’t. But I did. In the best way I knew how, I did.”

Eve didn’t miss the usage of the past tense to refer to her understanding of love. She had to agree, the old Villanelle never would have given Eve the option to walk away on the bridge. Maybe her deeper understanding of love had contributed to her newfound apprehension of the word.

“So, if you meant it then, why is it so hard to believe that I mean it now?” 

Eve really thought that she’d made a good point, but evidently Villanelle didn’t concur.

“It’s not about people not meaning it in general,” she snarked in a ‘duh’ tone of voice.

Eve took a deep breath, reminding herself to be patient. This was probably the only way Villanelle knew to react when she felt vulnerable and cornered. “What is it about then?”

Villanelle sighed, seemingly giving up on hiding things from Eve. Eve was very persistent where Villanelle was concerned. “They lie when they say it to me,” she admitted, defeated.

And, well, Eve supposed that answered quite a few questions. She still wasn’t exactly sure what had changed since Rome, though, to make her do a full 360 on the entire concept of love. They still hadn’t talked about why Villanelle was so upset at the tea dance, so maybe it had something to do with that.

Eve’s gut instinct was to console her but she didn’t think Villanelle would appreciate it. She was also out of logical arguments, so she decided to just be frank.

“Listen to me,” she started, and didn’t continue until Villanelle made eye contact with her. “I’m so sorry that people have made you feel like that.”

Villanelle shrugged.

“And I don’t know how to make you believe me, but I _do_ feel that way about you. We don’t have to use the three words if they make you uncomfortable nowadays. But don’t tell me how I feel, okay? I know how I feel. I’m positive about this. About you.”

Villanelle thought that over for a long moment, her jaw clenching and unclenching a few times. Eve could practically see the gears turning in her head. 

“What if you stop… feeling that way?” she eventually asked quietly, and Eve finally understood. It wasn’t that Villanelle was afraid of someone loving her; she was afraid of getting a taste of real love and then having it taken away. That’s why Eve’s term of endearment didn’t bother her but the actual three words did. Calling someone ‘baby’ is cute and sweet and all but doesn’t really convey any sort of permanence. Telling someone ‘I love you’ does, so it hurts all the worse if it ends.

“I don’t have a good answer for that, I’m sorry,” Eve replied honestly. “But what I do know is that I have no intention of stopping any time soon, so I think we should just cross that bridge _if_ we get to it.”

Villanelle nodded as her eyes drifted down, seemingly understanding that a promise of forever would be unrealistic and could end up being dishonest.

She was quiet for a couple more moments, before she looked back at Eve. “I think you should try.”

“Try to what?” Eve asked, hoping Villanelle didn’t mean that she should try to stop loving her. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able, at least at this point in time.

“Make me believe you,” she answered, and cracked a small smile, and Eve breathed an internal sigh of relief. She knew, then, with startling clarity, that they’d be okay.

Again, she was nothing if not persistent. Especially when it came to Villanelle.

“You’re on,” Eve smiled back, and leant in for a soft kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my second Villaneve fic that has a silly premise but ends up getting kind of serious by the end, apparently I have an M.O.!
> 
> Let me know your thoughts below <3
> 
> P.S. I did do a bit of research on separation anxiety (on the website https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322070), so I understand that Villanelle moping around for a day without her gf isn't a perfect depiction, since true separation anxiety disorder is a legit thing that's more extreme and chronic. I was just trying to figure out a good way to fulfill the prompt and stay true to V's character, not trying to pose as a medical professional! :)


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